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Ben scoffs at my earplugs even though he secretly covets them. Yet, like a faithful neighbor, he never breaks the sanctity of his vow of chastity even in his time of greatest desire.

That time came in some strange warped dimension along Route 101 in California when we stayed at a campsite that hosted — just across the way — a family that was turned down from Jerry Springer because the network wouldn’t allow it. That night, I slept soundly: ear plugged all the way to my Eustachian tube.

Ben didn’t sleep. And how could he? It was like a Jeff Foxworthy joke gone awry. There was screaming and beer bottle throwing and other types of nastiness that he wouldn’t speak of the next morning. I could see it in his eyes though: that fear. That pale white twitch of the eye that explains in a blink that hell is real and you can end up there if you get lost. And yet: he refused to dip his paws into the sweet honeyed nectar of earplug bliss. Instead he chose hell.

I just don’t understand.

On the flight from Manchester, NH to Chicago, IL, I did my best to explain to Ben the delicate nature of the developing situation with #6. I used very mature words and verbose lexical choices that expressed the widest gamut of utter nonsense that I could conjure because, basically, I hadn’t a clue what was going on with #6 and me at that point other than a little something-something. She liked me, that much was obvious, and I had long had a crush on her. But did I want anything more than that? Did she? Was it wise? Was it unwise? Ben understood. He often doesn’t understand much about social situations but he understands something-something. And I don’t. Ben could Houdini-himself out of any predicament if a girl were at the end of it. He is innately resourceful when it comes to women. I could have a girl licking the inside of my ear while pinching my nipple and I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what it was she wanted from me.

Though the first nine years of my life were defined by a childhood in Illinois I have no opinion whatsoever about Chicago. When someone catches on that I was born in the Land of Lincoln, their first assumption is that I am from Chicago and I am quick to attest that I know nothing of it and have spent more time in London. The only use that I see for Chicago’s existence is as a place that resides halfway between one coast of the country and another — and it does a poor job of that. Whenever you fly across the country you stop in Chicago and that’s why it is there: so one can stop halfway and stretch your legs. But it isn’t halfway. So when you arrive there on a flight to, say, Seattle, you are disturbed by the fact that you have gotten on and off a plane and still aren’t halfway to your destination.

The Chicago airport was as it always is. We wished we had put GPS locators in our bicycle boxes so that we might track their separate journeys into the East-West Indies before they were re-routed, via carrier pigeon, to Seattle. Instead, we sat in the terminal and were haunted by the promise from our check-in agent that our boxes would be opened, unpacked, and inspected. This was a horrifying prospect. Our boxes had been packaged with the precision care of a microchip technician; the idea of an airline security personal rooting through our boxes was like imagining me weeding my mother’s flowers with a combine.

As irony would have it, however, all three boxes arrived without a hiccup. The two enormous bike boxes and the cleverly crafted Bob box (which I took great pride in, and two hours, to develop in such a way as to give an illusion of being under the length requirements while actually exceeding them by seven and a half inches). They were all there ready and waiting. I ran each one out to the car while Ben waited for the final piece of luggage that looked and acted like everything else everyone on the plane had packed. But that piece of luggage didn’t make it on our flight, so we had to go back and pick it up later. And yet we were not surprised. It makes sense, in a karmic way. But only by appreciating the eternal self-effacing humor prevalent throughout the known universe can this be understood.

Soon-to-be #6 picked us up in the airport and we loaded the luggage into her car. It was a small car, and cute, and our boxes were big, and cumbersome. Ben sat on the floor without a seatbelt, crushed between two bike boxes with a car seat pressing down on his head. But I hardly noticed. I didn’t look back. Or out the windows. Or at much at all really. I was preoccupied with a certain smell, a certain aura, a certain energy that wafted its way into my soul and clutched at my heart.

And so began the sexual tension that could only be managed with a snow blower. And what happened between then and the next morning will be left to the imagination; it involved kissing, yes, and much hand holding, certainly, and a fair amount of loveliness that I refuse to relate.

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